Were Skies to Fall
by FollowThisRhythm
Summary: [For Jenny.] "Hunger's a scary thing, isn't it?" Sometimes fire needs to be subdued, but sometimes fire simply needs fire.


A/N: I blame this fic on Madonna's "Ray of Light" album (not exactly because of the songs themselves, but because of the atmosphere they created in my mind as I listened to it, which was often one that very contemplative and very blue but absolutely enchanting, with this almost ethereal element to it as well) and despite my fic being nowhere near as expressive or as beautiful, this was heavily influenced off of the air I felt from it, although it wasn't purposefully done.

Anyway, and most importantly, this is for you, Jenny! For your birthday that just passed. Or the one before it. Or maybe both ...? Regardless, I'm SO sorry that it's taken me so horrifically long to get something written for you, especially when you've had such amazing fics ready for me, but I've been attempting to do this for you all of this time, I hope you know. That said, and long story short: You're positively wonderful, an absolutely brilliant writer and I'm so very happy that I know you, which I hope are all things you're aware of. I love you! x

And last but not least, many thanks to Ela for always being willing to edit, bear my strange inquiries and help me simply in general: you, my friend, are awesome. :)

**Were Skies to Fall**

:+:

The first thing he sees of Lily is her slender leg, swinging lightly back and forth and almost glowing in the darkness; the slopes of her knee and her ankle and the bottom of her foot swathed in hypnotizing shadows that swell, recede and move as arousingly as a crashing tide.

A strange, bursting itch pulses deep inside of his palm, spreads through his fingers and up his arm, and he clenches his hand into a fist.

As he approaches the tree, footsteps unintentionally (or perhaps intentionally) too light for her to take notice of, he's greeted with snapshots of the dusky curves of her body through the breaks in between leaves and branches, which scatter across her form in astral, smoky-blue bruises in turn, shivering with each breeze and movement: The blurry expanse of her covered thigh; her opposite leg stretched out along the branch; her upper body, clad in a thin sweater of sunset; her slight shoulders, looking deceptively brittle; her long, tilted neck blooming from her shaded, expressive collarbones. ...

His heart is throbbing, an almost-pain inside of him is waking (a sensation he'd somehow thought he'd forgotten) and he's so, so thankful that she isn't looking.

As Teddy stops, there is the softest sound of crunching grass beneath his feet and his muscles stiffen, mouth dries, as his breath hitches on the sweet evening air (chokes on the nearly unidentifiable lingering scent of her hair); waiting for her to look down to him, catch his expression and identify it for what he worries (but suspects) it to be — but she doesn't. A moment passes, and another, and another ... and still she doesn't shift, doesn't give the slightest sign that she's aware of his presence, and he realizes with a start that the frenzied pace of his pulse is already calming, subsiding; that his hands are now only ever so slightly quaking as his body attempts to shake away into nonexistence the wrong, wrong thoughts born from all the alluring things he had seen of her just now. And yet, when he looks more closely at her — notices the slight slump to her shoulders; the wistful way her eyelashes curve upwards, pale and long; the shallow way her eyes absorb and reflect the moonlight; the discontent line of her pale, wondering lips — it becomes almost fearfully easy to push those other thoughts aside for achingly tender ones instead, which somehow feel too precious and raw for him to admit even exist, and he finds it impossible to decide which between the two (which between the two different kinds of inappropriate) is the worst.

This inexplicable, seemingly inescapable conflict of heart and mind unhinges reason and before he can think not to, as he stares and tries to discern the misery in her lines, he says, "You're somehow sadder each time I see you," sounding even to his own ears more affected than he should.

Silence.

Lily doesn't reply, seems to not even hear him, and despite his abrupt intrusion, despite how her presence alone is enough to fill him to an unparalleled degree with apprehension, isn't visibly moved by him in the least.

This makes Teddy feel defeated, and even more so when he doesn't entirely understand why. He forces his hands, which are already carefully confined to the pockets of his trousers, into fists, encouraging his hammering heart into something manageable as he digs his fingertips deep into his palms, forcing his tendons to strain to the point that he half-believes they will push themselves beyond the boundaries of his skin; the sensation a mere object to manipulate in order to balance himself, ground himself, centre himself as he reminds himself that this is _Lily_, damn it, and there's no reason for him to always _feel_ like this when it comes to her (ignoring the logic that tells him it may be because she's Lily that he always feels like this when it comes to her) — but then her head falls back against the trunk, the loose tail of her plait slips from her shoulder and closer to the centre of her chest, her gaze falls on him and stays, and his control nearly shatters.

For a long moment, all that moves on Lily is her hair: the thin but glowing strands, unnaturally sanguine in the half-light instead of rosy, that restlessly flutter and tepidly twirl, somehow managing to look as if they're grasping for him; but then the set of her lips ever so slightly shifts and the air changes.

"Sad?" she repeats, her gleaming eyes arresting him, and the feelings that they inspire make Teddy want to question what little self-respect he still has left for himself. "Is that the way you see me?" she asks musingly, as if she's speaking more to herself than to him, even while watching him, and her eyes crease with thought.

His shoulders lift up, pull closer, hunch; holding close to his body not for warmth and protective not because of cold.

"No," she finally continues, steadily, lightly, as she looks off somewhere beyond him, and she has that odd look about her as she always does, as if she's protecting some private amusement of him or the world from him and the world as she grins through her riddles and half-truths. "Not sad. Contemplative."

But he isn't swayed and elects to direct his scowl at nothing in particular.

There is a bloated pause between them that elongates into silence, continues loudly against the familiar familial sounds drifting out and down from the Potter's home and to the little slope in the Potter's backyard, and all he can think about in that dangerous (precious) moment is of the way she's watching the moon. Not as a person content, who falls into meaningful nostalgia or harmless dreams when caught in its wake, or even into simple marvel, but as a person who is always, always looking for more.

And there is something so vaguely, disturbingly familiar about the expression that it hurts.

"Can't they mean the same thing?" he finally asks, the muscles of his shoulders unwinding from their clench and his spine gently sloping, his entire being suddenly incredibly tired, and she turns back to him in mild surprise. He thinks that he sees her blink, but he can't be sure, and then she smiles, sleepy slow, caressing soft, and he knows that he wouldn't have been able to miss it even if he'd wanted to.

"Yeah," she eventually agrees, easily, as if the present matter was something much lighter than it was. "I suppose they can."

But he feels no good feeling, no self-satisfaction or triumph, because although her presence is as cloudy as ever, she's still pretending that those discontent feelings of hers aren't there, and he's feeling just as confused (and angry _because_ he's so confused when he has no right to be) as he always is, unable to make sense of how moments such as these can make him want to cover his face and drop to his knees (because somehow, against all reason, her sadness feels like his failure, even when he's never had any responsibility for her).

Surrendering, accepting what he doesn't want to even think but on some level already knows and telling himself that this is all in some way natural is what the largest part of himself wants to do, as it's the only option he can ever imagine choosing that will still give him the leeway he partially desires to train himself into ignorance, painted as it may be; but another part, a smaller part, a much less superficial part is telling him the exact opposite (and it's all that he can hear).

But he _knows_ that what he feels isn't (and couldn't possibly be) natural, and that while he can tell and tell himself that it's all just a misunderstanding — that his emotions have simply been misguided and misplaced, that they can't be greater to him than those he has for the person who's _supposed_ to mean the most to him (the person he'd _chosen_ to mean the most to him) — it doesn't necessarily make any of it true, and it's been an impossible lesson for him to wholeheartedly acknowledge and one even more impossible to accept.

As Teddy sets his eyebrows and looks off into the dying horizon, determinedly not at her, he wonders how it's possible that she can make him feel more uncomfortable with all of his lies and more comfortable with the concept of freedom of mind each time he sees her; how she can unknowingly arouse inside of him all of the fatal revelations that she does and make him so excruciatingly sensitive towards the reality of his own forced ignorance and closed eyes. Mostly, though, he wonders how much room is left inside of him for all of these realizations, insecurities and fears to grow; how many times of seeing her before his limit is reached, all of his lies and his wrongs are spilled, and the lives of everyone involved are unintentionally, irrevocably, upturned.

He's so helpless then that he wishes for the universe to send him some sort of sign. Something more than the tangy, nostalgic aftertaste of sunset on his skin and the sound of Lily's breathing. (Something, for once, that doesn't lead directly back to her.)

"Why're you here?"

Teddy's ribs bloom and a long, quiet breath escapes through his nose.

His initial reaction is to say because he was invited, thanks — simply to keep it as simple as possible, as well as for the truth to stay as private as possible — and his second thought is to say nothing in return at all, but there are heady scents wafting up from the little, sprouting garden only a few yards away, and frosty wisps of clouds dissolving above him, and a pearly darkness descending that all combine to create something intoxicating and intimate, which passes through all of his cautious mental designs and makes his tongue slack.

"I needed air," he replies, patting his pocket for a smoke and remembering his promise to quit with regret when he feels nothing, and he sighs again, harsher. "And I thought it'd be rude not to say anything when I knew you were here," he continues, the beginning of what he knows will likely be a long string of vague truths to follow, "Even if you've been avoiding me all night." (This is said before he can think not to say it and he turns in an attempt to hide the flush that develops on his face afterwards.)

A muffled, foggy sort of exhalation tells him that Lily is laughing.

"Don't think so highly of yourself," she chastises and he can hear her smiling. The mood palpably morphing into something lighter, she stresses, "I've been avoiding everyone."

Teddy's eyes are drawn back to her, avidly watching the back of her kindling head and attempting to avoid anywhere (everywhere) else.

"Why would you want to do that?" he asks with reluctant but evident curiousity, still unable to grasp her even after all of this time, and she doesn't make any pointless efforts to disguise her obvious smile.

"I needed air."

He blushes hotly in his cheeks again, eyes narrowing and darting away, and flustered, he barks out the first thing that comes to mind: "Aren't you a little old for this?" he demands, sounding — to his chagrin — exactly as if he were a child, unexpectedly caught off guard in a situation he'd believed he'd been in control of all along, and he further lashes out at the realization. "You're a grown _woman_."

There's a pause and then she turns back to him, unavoidably making his pulse stutter, race.

He glowers.

"Am I?" Lily replies, her eyelashes lowering fractionally, face hinting at a strange grin that hardly lasts. "I don't feel like it."

And there's another unidentifiable change as her humour and his irritation each dissolve. His gaze roams, and even though it doesn't touch any part of her that isn't virginal, his throat still constricts; even while heat prickles tellingly beneath his skin, he doesn't offer any flimsy apologies or stop.

"You look like it," he offers after another long moment, sweltering and low, and he's unsure of (or perhaps just not wanting to accept) the meaning behind what seems to be several wildly inappropriate and possibly suggestive words.

She stares and he gulps down his heart and she stares some more. He absently, purposefully reaches a hand out to her calf and his fingertips graze the surface.

Another whoosh of air — although there is a different, heated sort of weight to it than from that of her last exhale — and she asks, "How should I take that?"

There is a brief, swollen lapse before he responds.

Finally: "How do you think?" he replies, and she gazes at him hard.

"Probably much differently from how I want to."

If he hadn't known better, he would've sworn that his heart actually, utterly stopped before spluttering back to life; crashing into some utterly mortal and puzzled rhythm. Shivers erupting along his spine, he doesn't know how he's supposed to react to this — what was it (precisely) that she'd meant by this? — so he lets her words hang; suspended for a long moment as they are needlessly absorbed deeper and deeper into him, already a part of him, before dispelling.

"You're covered in goosebumps," he whispers, taking in her suddenly rough skin, and some small, normally smothered part of himself wants to believe that it isn't his mind playing tricks on him when he think he hears her swallow.

His very existence seems to lurch towards hers when his fingertips leave her ankle.

"It's a little cold."

(They both know it isn't.)

Teddy's hand falls to his side and he once again meets her blazing, blazing eyes.

Quietly: "Hm?"

"Mm," Lily breathes, the same wordless response that sounds mostly like a sigh, and it feels as if the air is hot and thick and opaque with emotion and unmentionables for a very long amount of time before self-awareness begins to trickle into him again and it dawns that no matter how unreal the moment seems, it doesn't mean that it's as disjointed from the rest of the world as it feels or that they won't later remember it, and so he jerks back, blushing and uncomfortable and his stomach twisting and twisting and twisting, as what he had said and done presses like needles into his limbs.

(He'd liked that blooming scarlet behind the freckles in her cheeks and he'd liked the reaction she'd given him of her skin all beaded and he'd somehow maybe even liked saying those embarrassing things he'd no right to be saying, but it wasn't his place to do or like _any of __this_ and he knew — _fuck_, did know.)

He wets his lips, swallows, opens his mouth to say some distant, inconsequential thing that will fail in distracting them and glances back — but her hand, thin and long, is fanned over her face, poorly covering her flushed skin; moonlight is illuminating the round, peachy flourishes of what he can see of her cheeks, jaw and nose; her eyes, mostly hidden and scrunched, are desperately filled with something he wants (and doesn't want) to know and flickering between his own — and she beats him again.

"That's dangerous, you know," she warns, her voice anchored in a strange, feminine way that he had never heard from her before, and oh, he knows.

The knowledge is heavy inside of him — inside of the deepest part of his chest and the lowest part of his stomach and pulling, pulling down — and that mysterious, pulsing itch is back and burning within his palm but now spreading, pooling particularly in the areas of his fingertips that had felt her skin, and even the pressure on his left hand isn't enough to break through to him in the fog.

But then her lips are moving, she's speaking and he's being violently wrenched back into reality.

"Why are you here?" Lily impels, the world shifting back into focus, and all he can see of her face now is her profile and chin. "I mean, seriously."

He swallows slowly, and when his throat stops working, tries again.

Finally, thickly: "I told you," he whispers, but his words are lost as the world is consumed by a sudden rustle, moved from the vibration of a powerful gust of air, and the collective sound of branches and leaves pressing together around them trickles like a smaller, more broken version of a water fall. The stray strands of her hair are thrust forwards, lashing about her face, grasping to feel her neck and the impenetrable line of her lips, curling around her ears, and moonlight suddenly breaks through, igniting streaks in just the right moment to make it appear as if she is bursting out of the heart of an efflorescent, scarlet and undying fire; so impossibly beautiful, so painfully bright.

And just like that, it's over.

Lily shifts and from behind her wrist comes the bewildering sound of hushed laughter, floating down to him in drifting, snowflake-soft notes. Her hand moves to brush back the hair that had come forward and then falls to a rest in her lap, her hanging leg jerks and is pulled up, and she fixes an indecipherable grin on him.

"Were you escaping my family?" she asks, and Teddy feels his face begin to heat up yet again. "Were you looking for me?" she continues and his heart thuds, head snaps up until his chin is tilted back, as some distant part of him acknowledges the quick step he's involuntarily taken away from her.

"Why would I want — ?" he stammers, embarrassed and furious and blushing, and her smile becomes smaller but more sly, the ghosts in her eyes almost completely dying.

"There's no need to strain yourself," she soothes. "Time after time of finding myself stuck with you, I've been able to piece it together. You always find me," she says, as if she were commenting on something mundane, something that wasn't pivotal and rearranging everything, "Even though you don't always like me."

And he wants to laugh here, look her squarely in the eyes and tell her she's wrong because she always annoys him and he never likes her and while he doesn't understand why he always ends up here, there's no meaning behind it regardless, but the truth is that his breath is coming a bit too shallow and he's finding it painful to continue merely standing in one place because even though she's always slipping away, she's always waiting, and even though she's always throwing him off balance with her haphazard moments of infuriating sass — driving him insane by hardly ever expressly saying what she means or meaning what she says and endlessly playing her intricate, little games — she's still the only one who can keep him on his toes, and he's afraid that all of the things he tries to convince himself he likes the least about her are what he really likes the most.

And this is dangerous. These emotions and these thoughts should make him feel as if walls are closing in on him and he's digging himself a grave but it's even more dangerous because he doesn't feel like that; everything feels like it's opening up for him _and it doesn't feel like that at all_.

"Saying that —" Teddy begins but has to stop in order to clear his throat, and he ignores how his voice is somehow just as harsh even after. "Saying such stupid things," he mutters, because they _are_ so stupid (even if, for some reason, he still can't look at her because of them). "I don't understand you," he eventually confesses without meaning to and his jaw flexes when he catches himself. "Why aren't you acting like yourself?" he asks, even when what he means is: 'Why aren't you acting the way you do when you're around everyone else?' and 'Why am I the only person who knows you like this?'

He rakes a hand through his hair, pulls at the roots, and stares angrily, desperately at the ground and the trunk and the branches and leaves just beyond her shoulders (never directly at her) as his mind spins out of control. Moonlight is becoming animated and haunting and stripping him bare, clouding his mind, illustrating on that very same leg of hers — that very same leg which has absently fallen as it had before — tantalizing stories and designs that are begging to be devoured by his touch (and his heart) and his eyes, worshiped entirely; but he can't — he can't — he can't — he —

Why can't he?

"I'm not acting anyway," she says, after a time that has felt like a split second and century all at once, and he suddenly becomes aware of the fact that he has dropped to balance on the balls of his feet, his neck bent and his arms coming up to pass over the back of his skull, hands clasped behind.

It feels vulnerable and telling, this position, but he can't find it in himself to care enough to move and after all, it's safer to not give himself the opportunity to look at her.

"But I can't understand you when you're not acting like yourself," he repeats, forcing the words out, sick at how he can hardly remember the face it shouldn't be possible for him to ever forget (even when he's in Lily's presence) and full of regret at how he can't figure out whether or not forgetting the promises he'd made to that person is what he regrets the most right then or if it's the fact that he'd made them in the first place. More than that, however, he hates that he's lying once again because he at least understands that one thing he _doesn't_ understand (and one thing that's lead to the all-consuming problems he's found himself in now) is himself.

Or, no: perhaps it has less to do with the fact that he doesn't understand himself and more to do with him not wanting to. Either way, it's no chore for him to figure out which would be worst.

"Forget it."

His breath stops in his lungs as the muscles of his shoulders and back pull tight.

He swallows, and then, hoarsely: "What?"

She's quiet for such a long amount of time that he thinks she may not speak again, looking at something he can't see on her lap, almost appearing regretful that she'd spoken, but just as the thought passes, she does. Her tone a glowing ember: "I said forget it. Whatever it is you're thinking. I can tell it's too complicated and loathsome for you to manage, and obviously all you're doing is fucking yourself up, so ... forget it."

And all he can wonder is if she knows. If she knows the kind of thoughts he's been having for her, if they're uncomfortable and unrequited and unwanted as they sit with her, and this out of everything should not ache the most but it does.

"I think you should go back inside," Lily abruptly says, quiet and unexpectedly indifferent, speaking as if he were a stranger and this situation hadn't already happened many times before, and he almost wants to think that the reason for this change of mood is because she somehow followed his last thoughts but he knows that it's because she's started thinking of Victoire.

The ring on his finger is telling him that he should be thinking about her, too.

His hands slide back over his head as it lifts, moving until his thumbs are stretched down across his jaw and his palms are over his lips and his fingers are flat against the contours of his nose, the tips pointing up to his temple, pressing too hard into his skin, and finally, unthinkingly, his eyebrows pulled rigidly together, he says, "I'm a hypocrite."

And she gives him a peculiar look of mingled interest, vexation and something else; appearing torn between sating her own curiousity and sticking to her earlier words.

Teddy hears her break off a beginning sigh.

"Most people are," she finally agrees and despite everything, despite how callously expressed her following words are, he has an inkling that the hard feeling may be more superficial than what she wants to let on. "What makes you so special?"

He can't reply to this and this time she doesn't bother to keep her sigh at bay.

"We're always contradicting ourselves, saying one thing and doing another," she eventually responds, after he says nothing, and he can hear the soft creaking of the branch, the soft shuffling of her clothes, as she shifts. "That's something you've got to either change or accept, Teddy, because just dwelling on it's pointless."

Fraying clouds roll in the hazy space beneath the moon, catching half of its light and keeping hold while the rest falling in pale, crawling patches through splattered, gaping holes. As Teddy mindlessly takes this in, he finds himself wondering what the light is doing to her face now, as the memory of how she had looked earlier (lost deep inside of her head, far out of his reach, with that somehow stormy lull shading her expression) comes back to haunt him — and with it, his stomach turns to lead, his heart sinks and he closes his eyes: He shouldn't be allowing this.

"I think it applies to me, too."

He can feel her eyes — earthy, life-giving brown — on him, and he can see the lonely strands of hair swaying about her face even without looking, having mapped out the pattern of its movements long before, and in his mind's eye, he can trace the spidery shadows that must be trailing in elegant, satiny strokes down her cheeks, born from moonlight and the angle on her eyelashes, and at the image, his throat almost closes.

(She's too much.)

"What?" Lily asks and he swallows, parched.

"What I said to you," he responds, speaking more but not expressly saying anything beyond what he already has, and she remains silent for a long time, perhaps attempting to find an answer already written across one of his limbs or maybe thinking back on what had already been said.

He presses his face even harder into his hands.

A gentle wind blows, unobtrusive as it passes over his still form but for an inexplicable shiver that goes tumbling down his spine, and it arouses the world around him: leading the leaves in a hushed chant and encouraging the atmosphere around him into something sweet and pungent and musky, richly electric, as the aroma of jasmine and roses and grass and spices and things he can't even begin to identify swell; blossoming in the very air he was tasting, inhaling.

But then Lily says his name and a new enchantment encases him (he knows that she's starting to understand, and he knows that the breakdown of all he's deceivingly built has begun).

"Teddy?"

A pause, and then: he slowly opens his eyes, stands, lowers his hands and nervously watches her moving mouth.

"I think I finally just figured you out," she says, sounding too relaxed than he thinks she should in such a moment, but he doesn't doubt that she has. "Or ... at least that expression you're always wearing, anyway," she amends, mostly to herself, before once again acknowledging him: fire trailing across his shoulder and his skull and his jaw; intangible scorches where her gaze has landed and traveled and stroked. But then her presence becomes muted, grim, as the heat simmers down into something somehow melancholy and only lukewarm, and she asks what he'd both been anticipating and dreading; what he'd already, only not so forwardly, asked of her.

"Are you sad?"

And those last words, those last three very dangerous words, seem to resound; the quiet tone in which she had said them in seeming to almost double and triple in sound until the irrational worry that the entire world is hearing them clutches at his heart and his stomach and his lungs, making him want to shoot up to his full height and pull her (hold her) to him and cover her mouth.

Teddy's eyes rise and hers at that same moment fall and then they are locked, his stare hesitating but determined as it flickers between, and hers glowing; the eyelashes framing them graceful (almost, but not quite, ill-fitting for a girl who initially comes across as so barbed) and the thoughtful lines around them hard with concentration.

But there's nothing for him to really say and she seems to have already accepted this. From the moment he had stepped outside, thoughtlessly walked over (led by that obscure _tugging_ within the area of his heart) and said his first word to her, he had already taken it too far; he'd already overstepped all of the boundaries he should have minded and made certain to abide — all of the ones he always promised himself he would and all of the ones that always ended up as lies.

He had taken it too far when he'd touched her skin; when he'd allowed his stare to go to any place below her neck, be it to a secret, intimate place or simply to her ankle. He had taken it too far when he'd chosen to disregard feigning even the slightest semblance of decency to those he'd encountered back inside of the Potter's home, opting instead to listen with just one ear and make no attempt to hide his anxiously darting eyes, anticipating the first opportunity that would present itself in which he could slip outside.

He had taken it too far when he'd started to become self-conscious of his own wedding ring; when, in order to save himself from almost being driven insane as he tried to figure out what Lily meant each time she glanced at it with that strange, starved look, he had considered simply taking it off and slipping it into his back pocket for the (generally short) amount of time that he was with her. He had taken it too far when he'd first found himself in moments contemplating the differences between loving a person and being in love with them, and trying to map out the possibilities and reasons for why a person could have fallen out. He had taken it too far when, in the times Victoire would pull him down into bed and he would press her into the sheets, he had without intention or initial realization began to imagine her with burning hair and slightly darker, faintly sun-teased skin; started to yearn for dominant and challenging, utterly fearless kisses (just the type he pictured Lily having).

And yet, despite all of this, the fact that he had taken everything too far hadn't even crossed his mind until only a few months ago, half a year or so after all of this had begun, when he had been out to dinner with Lily, her brothers and her parents, Victoire at his side.

It had been normal: Harry had been poorly disguising chuckles as coughs and hiding smiles (behind his napkin, his drink, his hand) as Ginny continuously scolded their adult, endlessly bickering sons (and him); Victoire had been laughing, her ocean eyes luminescent even underneath the cheap restaurant lights and vividly alive, arousing the interest of everyone around; and Lily had been positioned in the corner, not appearing to put conscious effort into drawing as little attention to herself as possible but succeeding, smiling but looking far off — and it had _hit him_ as he sat there, looking and looking over at her — attempting to think of ways to make her smile and honestly _see _him, the room, the world — as his wife held his hand and rubbed spiraling, gentle circles with her thumb all the while, playfully and unassumingly winking at him when he glanced her way (but at Lily, always at Lily) — that he was _sick_. He hadn't wanted this, for his feelings to change, to be able to sit there _next to his wife_ and wonder helplessly about another woman and of how he could make her happy, but he had and it made him absolutely disgusted with himself. He had sworn to Victoire, vowed his lasting love, but it just wasn't the _same_ anymore and what he felt for her now wasn't what he'd promised a lifetime ago and he could feel that it was all ending, everything that'd meshed and linked between them to make them one, although he hadn't ever, ever, ever meant for it to.

Everything aside, he cared for Victoire, would always in some way care for Victoire, even if it wasn't in the way he was supposed to, and the realization of everything, of what had become of him and Lily and Victoire, of what must and would, _entirely because of him_, had physically hurt.

After that, the evening had ended in confusion and disaster: Once being tackled with the comprehension, he had proceeded to accidentally knock over his drink, nearly trip over his chair, upset and almost spill Al's drink (who had been seated on his other side) and then nearly tear the table cloth half off as he went to right himself, effectively spilling and knocking over everything on the table anyway. Everyone had stared and he had apologized as coherently as he could, as if he wasn't completely mortified and horrified and there weren't black spots ballooning in front of his eyes, while James had reached out a steadying hand and Ginny had fussed, saying that there wasn't any real harm done and asking if he was all right. But Harry had looked deeply, right down into him, as if he could read every little thing; Victoire had gawked at him with wide, alarmed eyes as she unconsciously gripped his arm a bit too tight, and Lily had just steadily watched, although with obvious surprise, as Teddy further agonized over the fact that he had noticed (and was still noticing, despite efforts not to) how much he liked the pale blue dusted on her eyelids even when he couldn't vaguely recall whether or not Victoire was wearing a skirt or a dress.

And as Teddy comes back to himself, standing there in the Potter's yard, Lily staring down at him, the feel of her skin still pulsing on his fingertips, his mouth always, always, always wanting to try hers, it dawns on him that he's doing it all over again: essentially, this is that night, exactly the same in the aspects that matter most; and even more than that, when it comes down to it, when he's really honest with himself, he knows that all he actually regrets to his core is how Victoire — whenever it is that he'll finally be able to work up the courage to be even a fraction of the man she deserves — whenever he finally confesses to her — will inevitably be left hurt, especially since she hadn't been the one in the wrong.

Is he sad?

Lily's question repeats itself then, as he rubs a hand over his face and drags it through his hair, urging his pulse into settling, and he can't understand how such a simple question can be so hard to answer or how it can lead to so many different things.

Before he can catch the cause, the leaves and branches above him are being softly shaken by abrupt, unnatural tremors and then (unexpectedly but not entirely unwanted) Lily is landing at his side; brushing off her clothes and pressing loose hair behind her ears and minutely narrowing her eyes, advancing closer as he steps back, till he feels the bark against his shoulder blades and spine through the thin fabric of his shirt.

He catches his breath, studying her unusually pale face only a handful of inches below and away from his own, and distantly wonders if it's possible for the slope of someone's eyebrows to look distraught or if he's simply losing his mind.

"Because," she very faintly says, wearing a meaningful frown and making his stomach flop, continuing on with what she had asked, "I think you look confused. And hateful. And hungry. And I don't believe anyone should have to feel like that every day of their life."

The oddity of her words — "_hungry_"? — is the only thing that distracts him from the sensation the warm blush of her breath leaves on the bare skin of his neck when she speaks.

"What —?" he begins, in the same tone he often found himself using with her, as his face contorts with his incomprehension, but she carries on over him.

"It's unfair."

And even though Teddy thinks of Victoire, he still asks, "For who?"

Lily looks at him reproachfully, as if he should already know, and replies, "For that person. For everyone," sounding, for a moment, strangely airy but her tone again grows solemn. "You think your problems are yours alone, but they're not. Even if they don't know the details, or even what the matter is itself, for the people you're important to," she says, driving into him, even as he attempts to stumble away, "Your problems and the effect each one has touches them, too."

But Teddy can't handle this new insight. He can't stand her reprimanding, unfathomably affectionate gaze, and he can't bear feeling her body heat or seeing the lonely slump that he can't erase to her suddenly small shoulders, and he can't stomach the smothering confinement being caused by cage on his hand — _he can't_ — and he doesn't want to _hear_ about all of the terrible things he's directly and indirectly doing when he already _knows_.

He pushes past her, half-rubbing at the sudden and inexplicable lump that has lodged itself in his throat as if it will make the ache go away, and as his last hopes of retaining some sort of composure in front of her scatters from him like mist, his incapability to be master of his own desire crashes through him, he snaps.

"How could _you_ know?" he spits, turning on her with venom, regretting each word before it can even leave his mouth but now much too scared of her and the situation and his own emotions to stop. "You're always disappearing into your head, always shaking off anyone who tries to get close to you, always avoiding adding any actual _depth_ to any of the relationships you have with_anyone_, and yet you can somehow stand here, just as fucking sure of yourself as you always are, and tell me _I'm_ being unfair — that _I'm_ the one doing things wrong — _look in the fucking_ mirror_!_" he snarls, glaring through hooded, self-loathing eyes down into her own, which are flinty and gleaming more tempestuously than ever, and the fact that she can still appear to be so in control of herself even while he can only crumble only spurs him on.

Could it be possible that all of this — inevitably breaking Victoire's heart — losing weight and sanity and sleep — wanting nothing more than to be with her, with _Lily_, so he could make her smile and happy and her eyes open and inviting to everything that's around her — is one-sided? Could it be possible that she felt none of this? Nothing, for him or from him, of his struggle and his emotions for her, at all?

The possibility that this could be the case should make him happy, relieved, as it gives him the chance to simply stop right here, right now, before this can snowball any further, as well as the opportunity to turn away, brush this whole event off and move past it (seeing as how he would be the only one aware of what had been happening inside of his heart and his head, and while Lily would still be angry at him for his behaviour, she would be none the wiser) but it doesn't; it just hurts and he's desperate, as he shouts, for all the breath and volume and power exhaling out of him to carry some of that unbearable emotion with it.

"_What can you possibly fucking_ notice _when you're never fucking_ here?"

And Lily makes a sound that is indistinguishable between a hiss and a growl as she raises her arm, stepping forward.

"I may be just as inept as you are when it comes to all of this — just as _unfair_ —" she retorts, just as vehemently, shoving at his shoulder as she comes closer (and he really, really wishes she wouldn't, not because of the action itself but because she is simply once again challenging him, telling him what he already knows — that she's his equal in every possible way — perhaps, and unsurprisingly, even greater — and this confidence, this fearlessness, this fire is _what he wants_, damn it, and all she's doing is tempting his interest, his respect, his devotion).

He stumbles back and she glares.

"But," she fiercely continues, "I _always_ notice what matters;" and the meaning of her words does not escape him, no matter how overwhelmed the entire moment makes him feel.

His fight leaves him. He's suddenly very tired of battling when he always come out with nothing but wounds to show, and this combat feels as if it's been going on for far too long: against Victoire (even though it has been one-sided, with all of the attacks landing on himself) and against Lily (although, had some of the fight been _for_ her rather than against, he thinks he wouldn't have minded much at all). However, mainly, he has been fighting himself: the person he is now and the person he used to be, the man who had found Lily against the boy who had once found Victoire; and simply, it was absolutely exhausting.

Lily seems to see this, too (although, as this is always the case, with her nearly always spotting his vulnerabilities and the things he doesn't want known, he isn't significantly dismayed or surprised): She looks as if she could continue, tear him down and put him back in his place the way she probably should, putting direct focus on how despicable he had really just been, but she doesn't. She steps back, footsteps uneven and grass crunching almost like snow, wiping the back of her hand against her mouth as if to brush away her words and glowering up at him, before she eventually averts her eyes, collecting herself as she takes a deep, calming breath and runs her hands through what she can of her hair.

More silence.

Chest heaving, pulse racing, he sends a hasty, mechanical glance back to the house behind him in order to make sure that they hadn't revealed themselves to prying eyes ... as far as he can tell, they haven't: He can hear the collective hum of many voices chattering at once and the controversial music (chosen by whichever individual or minority that had taken control of the radio, as seems to have become an unhappy but unavoidable custom at these events) that only a handful enjoy and everyone else huffs at (but finds release in when exchanging complaints with their fellow majority) and he can vividly see that their silhouettes are still animatedly moving from beyond the family room curtain, throwing off distorted shadows with their charismatic and abrupt gestures.

Teddy and Lily are lucky (or perhaps unlucky would be more fitting, but he can't help clinging to the first when he takes the sensation he gets from being around her into account), as very little ever manages to stay private in this family, by what seems to simply be an extremely unfortunate principle. But just as this thought passes, an awful foreboding comes after it, pressing the urgency and wrongness of the matter once again into him, as if he could have possibly forgotten; warning him that whether it be by his lips or not, the truth would at some point come out.

And this should absolutely not sit well with him at all but he can't pretend the thought isn't freeing or that he doesn't feel some sort of comfort in the probability.

He's brought back when Lily shifts, the atmosphere about her so changed that it makes it appear as if everything that'd occurred between them had only been a figment of his imagination. However, that his skin can still feel the heat from their contact when she'd pushed him, and as he can still see a discolouration across her cheeks of lingering, angry rouge, tells him that it had been very much real. Still, she's serene enough as she folds her arms in front of her, languidly leaning back against the trunk, and that enigmatic amusement that somehow looks both sincere and almost tart, as it dusts the curves of her lips, flits through the fickle shadows that cross her expression when she tilts her neck, is there as well, and the only thing he can surmise from this is that the moment has been discarded, even if only briefly.

"Look at what it's doing," Lily says without preamble, as if he understands what "it" is, but she's continuing before he can point this out; the exaggerated swell of her ribcage and chest telling him that she has sighed and the tail-end of it palpable when she speaks. "Hunger's a scary thing, isn't it?"

And he blinks, stares at her (there it was again — "_hunger"_) and wonders, not for the first time, what in the world it is that she could be thinking to make her speak so strangely; so confidently, as if they had already discussed this before and hearing it right now didn't utterly baffle him.

"_What_?" he asks, his expression twisting, once again asking the same short question he finds himself always repeating when faced with her openly erratic self, and she looks at him so evenly despite everything that all he can really do is marvel at the workings of her mind.

"Hunger," she repeats. "Craving. Want. That starving ache you get inside you when you can't get the thing you want the most. More than anything in the world."

Listening to her, his lips parted and eyebrows high, Teddy decides that it isn't okay for her to be standing before him talking about hungers that hurt when he has so many for her, each more inappropriate than the last, with the worst of which being the purest ones. She's making him want to do something he will truthfully not regret, something that would be very, very rash, and he's selfish and weak enough that were she to continue, her words may just work, even if not in the way she'd intended.

Awkwardly, as inconspicuously as he can, Teddy rubs at a spot on his chest; trying to ease away the sudden bizarre pangs that have begun to shake at the roots of his heart, resounding in the area directly below his trembling hand.

"What — What are you even talking about?" he finally croaks, avoiding her stare at all costs. "I don't ... I can't understand you again."

Another breeze and it gently stirs the entire world.

He breathes deeply and tastes the garden.

She speaks: "I told you, didn't I? You always look hungry."

His eyes helplessly dart back to hers and lock; her eyebrows pull expressively and her mouth lifts in that sorrowful-but-not way as it opens.

"I always notice what matters."

Teddy's head becomes unbearably light, detached and immune to any reality beyond that of her, and for a moment he loses the feeling in his legs.

He can't do this: She's too much for him, and yet, at the same time, what little he's allowed to receive from her isn't enough. But she always does this, stares at him and captivates him and pushes his buttons and turns everything upside down, makes him furious and embarrassed and confused (and further absorbed), and he doesn't think she has a clue. Even worse, she does this to him and is oblivious to how he feels when he has to turn back around and find Victoire, who's kind and strong and funny and predictable and interesting, but hates confrontation and opposing him and would rather leave him to sulk or brood than kick him out of his rut.

She's tame. And Lily's not. And he never would have thought that his attraction would have changed so much but it had, same as how he'd never known himself that he couldn't deny fire until sometime after his wedding, when chance (fated?) occurrences had happened, consistently nudging he and Lily together until he'd become subject to hers.

(But how, he wonders, can he possibly hope to justify or explain this concept of fire?)

They watch each other solemnly for a long while, his hands shoved into his pockets and her ankles crossed, wind playing with the openings of his shirt and the messy coil of her hair, and he realizes that they are very close.

He pulls his bottom lip into his mouth, thoughtful, full of nerves, and his upper teeth scrape over it as he lets it go.

"I still don't understand," he finally admits, because it's easy and it's true and it's the first and only safe option that comes to mind, but her expression remains unchanged at his repetition.

"I think you do," she replies, placid but relentless. "You just don't want to look past the mental block you've made to see it."

His features tighten, mouth becoming a thin line, but still: this is nothing unprecedented.

"You're unsatisfied with yourself. Or your life. And there's something that you want more than anything, isn't there?" she asks, although she does not seem to expect a reply, and suddenly, something inside of her or around breaks and she looks very young and very lost and very empathetic and very small, and this is not something normal to see of her at all. "And it stays with you, doesn't it?" she continues, aware of how she must be revealing herself to him (she's Lily: she _has_ to know) but making no gesture whatsoever to cover herself up. "It eats you alive. It's doing it this very moment. Am I wrong?"

And she isn't, she isn't at all. Somehow she knows all of this and sees him more completely than anyone else has before and _she knows everything_ (or very nearly everything) but for some mysterious reason still asks. Then he wonders if this is her way of trying to make it easier on him, if she thinks it's supposed to comfort him that she hasn't cornered him from all sides, and then he knows that while she must know a lot, she certainly can't be aware of everything, because the slightest thing she does has the potential to make him crumble and there is nothing that can counter the way they work.

Teddy swallows and when he speaks, his voice is wretchedly gravelly and low: "You say that as if you know."

And back is her ever perplexing smile.

A beat and then, "Why?" he asks.

Her cheekbones are thrown into stark relief from the rest of her face as the curl of her mouth deepens, another idyllic line in addition to the rest.

"Who am I to you, Teddy?" she asks, her head tilting ever so infinitesimally, and his immediate answer to this, before he even has time to consciously decide, is "everything", but as this is far from appropriate, and astounding even to himself in its shatteringly intense sincerity, he keeps it to himself. All the same, his heart begins to race and his cheeks flush with a fever that radiates and his Adam's apple anxiously bobs as if he had really said it out loud, and she watches him as she always does, as if she's reading him, but there's also something there — something in the bleak expectancy of the grin he can see blossoming from the inside of her and up to her surface, like ink on paper or ripples on water — that makes him think that this time she may be missing something.

"I mean," she elaborates, as his mind shrinks and expands in his panic and he drifts, "What. What am I to you?"

And he is at a crossroads, a burning bridge on one side and a dusky path that leads to the girl it shouldn't on the other, and he knows that he could make it complicated the way everything else about this has been — think about how terrible he is and how impossible the situation is and of how unfair it is to everyone who is and will be touched by it — but there's something almost resigning about the question, something that leaves him defenseless, something that makes any falsehood he could offer too half-hearted and vaporous to bother uttering when she is looking at him in such a way.

"You're Lily," he says, because she's somehow, at some point, become everything and telling her that she is simply herself is just another, safer way to let her know; because there are parts of him that are hoping against hope that she'll hear the things he's saying in his words without actually saying them and tell him that she feels the same, that he isn't repulsive or alone, and things will work out.

But Lily only blinks and while he knows that this is exactly the way things should (logically) be, it doesn't keep resentment from budding; a familiar, slow and catching burn that is aimed at himself and progressively gnaws away at all of the pulsing, vital things beneath his skin.

"That's awfully cryptic, you know," she replies after a moment, thoughtful and reposed. "I can take that a lot of ways. Is it a good thing?"

Teddy scrubs at the bridge of his nose with the back of his hand as if it will make the sudden flush there disappear, attempting to compose his voice into something other than the unintentionally aggressive rumble it often falls into when faced with the confusion and insecurity only Lily causes in him (because only she brings out this side of him, but he'd be lying if he said it wasn't interesting). "It can be," he says, gaze purposefully looking aimlessly away, and she sighs, her loudest yet, but it sounds closer to laughter than anything else.

"Is it so hard for you to simply compliment a person? Or is there really so little about me that you like?"

His pulse increases and he glares, attempting to draw her attention away from any tangible marks the involuntary reaction to her would leave on him before he can actually register how irrational and ridiculous (but seemingly typical) such a gesture is of him. "You seem pretty desperate to be flattered," he points out rather caustically, although the statement is legitimate enough; he'd never known her to ask such a question of someone, after all, or to so persistently chase an answer. It was unnerving.

"I'm not above fishing," is her ready response, the rosy tops of her cheeks rising as her lips open and press into them, and he, to say the least, is floored.

Another thing he had never heard and he is so incredibly astounded that he's forgotten his embarrassment; his gaze meeting, demanding, her own without hesitation, in a way some small part of him distantly remembers being able to do before his feelings had started (a time that felt like much, much longer ago than it had been in reality).

"I ... didn't know you cared so much about what others thought of you," he eventually says, sounding more surprised and accusatory than he probably should, as it was normal for a person to pay some mind to the opinions of others, even if they didn't hold them in much esteem or take them to heart, but by the time he had finally seen Lily as someone else other than Harry's daughter or Victoire's cousin, she had been much more to him than as average as the person who cared about such things would suggest, and so to witness Lily acting so normal was nothing short of foreign and making her (dangerously) more real.

"I don't," she says, a beginning somberness creeping into her words and then deepening still. "Did you hear me ask anyone but you?"

Teddy swallows thickly, his heart nearly bruising his bones — and realizes, as he looks at her, at her suddenly ill but meditative expression, at the way her muscles have all gone tight, at the way her fingertips are digging shallow, tender craters into the skin of her forearms, that she is nervous. Anxious about something.

And suddenly, inexplicably, he is too.

All traces of Lily's pleased, smug smirk are gone. "I guess," she whispers, hushed and sober in the way she'd earlier been, in those first few heavy minutes of their conversation, "Your opinion must mean something to me after all. Isn't that funny?" she asks, as if there is any humour in it for them to find, but there is some thin quality to her tone that makes him question what, exactly, it is she's actually thinking but keeping to herself. "You, of all people."

"Li_**–**_Lily," he manages, his tongue too gentle against the roof of his mouth, too pliant as it grazes his teeth, too eager to stay on her name, pronouncing each letter and syllable over and over and over again until the impressions are engraved into his very skin, but a frown forms in the space between her eyebrows and she continues, missing all of this.

"How do you handle it?"

He blinks, his hands clammy as he uneasily confines them into fists and his arms too rigid at his side, as the tension, stifling and sultry as it had been, momentarily eases.

"What?"

"The hunger," she clarifies.

And Teddy grimaces. Forcefully unwinding his limbs from their clench, tearing a hand through his hair, he's taking a step away from her body heat and the addictive, kindling pull of her aroma before he realizes that he's moving, but this is good, it is, because he _just can't think_ when he has her on one side and the smothering weight of his guilt on the other and _this can't go on_.

"Stop," he demands, a headache forming as his palms press too viciously into his closed eyes, fingers tangling into what they can of the length of his hair. "Stop it," he says, but he sounds more exhausted and desperate than he does powerful, so it sounds closer to pleading.

"Why are trying so hard to pretend it isn't there?" Lily bursts, impatient for the first time, and his insides shrivel at her words; he can hear that she's moved closer and he's thankful that he can't see her. "_Why_ are you treating your own feelings like they're a _burden_?"

And he can't, can't, can't allow himself to dwell on the fact that Lily sounds close to tears.

His knees nearly give way.

"You don't —" he begins but trails off, his voice little more than a croak, and he attempts to find something that isn't quite so feeble as "understand"; he can find nothing else, however, and so he continues no further.

Regardless, she grasps his intent exactly.

"Understand?" she finishes for him, bitter and biting, and he can feel his shoulder blades shift and press further out of his back as he lowers his head and exerts a greater force of pressure against his eyes. "Maybe," she agrees, although no part of her sounds like she does, "But does anyone? Have you _let_anyone?"

Yet her tone suggests that she knows the answer even before she asks, so he says nothing — he simply doesn't need to — and just as he realizes this, her slender fingers lock around his wrists, curling as they brush the jutting bone on the side, and in his shock, he allows her to guide his hands down, till they are somewhere around the level of her hips and his, as he attempts to focus on the flecks radiating in her eyes rather than the stars bursting inside of his own.

Lily stares at him, clear as ever, until at last a visible resolve forms.

Teddy's flesh erupts into goosebumps and a jolt of fire spills down his spine.

"You asked me why," she murmurs, soft and slow, meaningful but halting, and her clutch on him becomes more firm.

A strange sound swells inside of his throat, one of mingled shock and reply and his own choking breath, which is almost too silent even for himself to catch, and he has to try a few times before he is able to swallow it down; offering a dazed, jerky movement afterwards that he'd intended to be a nod.

And Lily retreats: She releases him, her fingers seizing once as she does so while the pad of her index finger grazes the curve of the protruding bone leading to his thumb, and as she takes a short step back, her arms falling to a stiff rest at her sides, Teddy can't help thinking that she looks unbelievably out of place now that the image of her reaching for him has dug itself into the fabric of his mind. But as the distance between them finally registers, the reason for the absence of her touch and heat and the sudden gaping yawn of space between her bare feet and his shoes, his first conscious thought becomes a wish that he could have simply held — just for a few stolen, incredible seconds more — his response.

"You," she says, but he doesn't follow. "I know it because of you."

And then it dawns.

Her arms cross tersely over her chest, her hands in such constraining fists that her knuckles have flushed white, but she is unwavering when she speaks. "I'm always thinking about you, you know," she says, as if he really should have known, should have been able to tell, and then she lets out a short exhale of dryly amused air. "No," she sighs, "No, of course you don't. And you never would've, either, if not for me telling you now, but ..." she trails off, appearing very fixed but very grim and her gaze flickers back to catch his. "But I am."

And his stomach knots, lodges itself inside of his throat. He can't find his breath and he can't feel his knees and his palms are continuing to perspire no matter how many fucking times he wipes them against his jeans but worst of all, worse than anything else, is how difficult he's finding it to make sense of what she's saying. His thundering, frenzied, horribly and fantastically elated pulse is carrying everywhere though him, encompassing him, making it almost impossible to fathom her meaning over the insane sound, and while he on some level knows that his mind is very attuned to what she's saying, it's still not getting through to him on the most basic level. Her desperately important words with their preciously important meanings are collecting on his skin and teasing the shells of his ears and drifting inside of his skull but they are hitting a block and only incomprehensible fragments are making it through. And he doesn't know what to do about this, he's in no frame of mind to figure out how to deal with this, so when he focuses on her again, it's in an attempt to try and decipher how he should respond to such declarations through the cues given by the set of her shoulders and the strained curve of her jaw and the memory of the tone of her voice — but she's moved.

Her head has tilted forward, stray strands of hair falling in airy cascades and caressing in whispers the back of her hand, which has once again found its way to her face as it shields her in a manner that would've been eerily exact to her position earlier (after he had touched her) if not for the terrible ashen that her skin had taken on.

And he doesn't entirely understand why — he doesn't entirely want to accept why — but that pang is back and throbbing like a heartbeat inside of him, hot and lurching in his chest, pulling as if it can only struggle and strain if he is not close to her, and suddenly he's moving before he can think better of it, reaching for her, already tasting her name —

But Lily's hand moves to press at the base of her throat and he stops dead, jerking back before she can catch what he had apparently been about to do, because he is suddenly looking at her, honestly looking at her, straight into her eyes as she looks just as firmly back and there are no pretenses or clever designs or secret purposes or things to hide. They're just ... watching. Gazing at one another in an awe-inspiringly steadfast and unadulterated way that they'd never quite experienced before and it was overwhelming to Teddy (but in a really good, stomach-tightening kind of way).

Then, gravely: "You're married, Teddy," she says and he feels as though he's been plunged into a cold, grasping body of water. "You're married," she repeats, as if he hadn't heard her the first time, as if he hadn't been present at the event as the groom, as if he wasn't grasping at her words and planting each thing she said and did deeply inside of him, "But I ..." and all of a sudden her eyes are pink and swimming, her lips dark and swollen as if she'd been kissed, and he realizes that this is the first time he's seen her cry since she was a child (and the knowledge is suffocating). "I still want you. All of the time. Isn't that sick?" she asks, her stare somehow able to stay on him throughout this, and there is some breaking sensation inside of his head. "You're my cousin's husband but not even that stops me from thinking of you."

And Teddy is staggering past her, unseeing and unable to feel his heart, his hand lifting to lean against the trunk, before he can register that he's done anything, but it doesn't matter, it doesn't matter at all, because it isn't sick and she isn't sick and he isn't sick but the circumstances have made it all very, very wrong.

How can he tell her this?

A shallow breath.

Can he tell her this?

A dull pounding somewhere inside of him, reverberating.

Can he not tell her this?

Detached, his body moving on its own and his conscience trapped helplessly within it, his head turns until he has found her, found Lily with her messy hair, made worse after running her fingers through it too many times, and her salty tears that look as if they could fall at any given moment.

She is earnestly watching him, open and determined as he's never witnessed before, and it's there again, resounding inside of his mind regardless of how many times he acknowledges it for himself: Fire. All he sees when he looks at her is fire; from her slightly wild, slightly dancing hair to the blaze inside of her eyes to the clench in her jaw and even to the soft pink and red that has bloomed inside of her face in result of her turmoil.

And she's beautiful.

Lily is everything.

_How can he not tell her this?_

"L**–**Lily," he all but mouths, incapable of recalling how his tongue is supposed to move against his teeth as he stumbles over her name, but she fiercely shakes her head at him, her eyebrows passionately and purposefully drawn.

"I know you don't want this but you don't have to worry," she continues, as if this is what he cares to hear (even when it should be what he wants to hear). "You're not doing anything wrong, so you don't have to f**–**feel guilty —" but her voice softly, wetly hitches here and as he watches her throat work to swallow, it startles him to conceive that this somehow destroys him much, much more completely than it would have had she simply burst into tears, and Teddy wants to tell her — _needs her to know_ — that she is so incredibly wrong, so astonishingly reverse in her understanding, but his words and breath and any coherent state of mind he could possess are deftly eluding him, adamantly denying him, until he can do no more than gape blankly at her.

Another wind circles and passes, playing the leaves and branches above them as if they were instruments, uncomfortably hitting his eyes and scattering her hair, and the half a foot of space between them is abruptly highlighted as her tresses nearly reach him, touch him, making him realize just how close he'd pressed them in his pursuit of stability. His hand, supine against the bark, gives an inadvertent jolt in response and something about this, something about the jagged wood biting into his palm and the helpless sinking inside of him and the whole inconceivable moment makes him drop his arm and turn fully around and it's then he finally registers how stricken Lily looks, teeming with some indescribable emotion as she is, some sensation that causes her eyebrows to so expressively curve and her features to so mesmerizingly twist into something that causes his bones to quiver and doesn't appear unlike hunger, and suddenly it _crashes_ into him then — "_hunger_" — and if he hadn't already understood, he would have then.

However, Teddy doesn't have long to mull this over, can't reflect on it all, because in the next moment she has taken a step forward, lifted her arm and placed her palm behind him, between the swell of his shoulder and his elbow, as her fingertips curl into the tree's uneven surface and her penetrating eyes (which had been relentlessly gazing into his own for so long) are lost as her head bows.

Her heat caresses him as her forehead gently taps just below his collarbone, slides a bit farther down as a rough, fleeting sound of fracture whispers from her tightening grip on the bark, and Teddy doesn't have the faintest idea about how he manages to hold back his groan.

"I love you," Lily murmurs, her words soaking into the fabric of his shirt and further down into his skin, and she makes it seem as if confessing this to him is both the easiest and hardest thing to do in the world.

(He thinks if she feels for him the way he does her, it probably is.)

His eyes desperately squeeze to a close and the back of his head hits against the trunk as it restlessly, helplessly falls back. His trembling hands roll into clumsy fists at his rigid sides and he tries to remind himself that he shouldn't touch her, tries to remind himself to _remember_ that he shouldn't touch her and attempts to suppress the fierce, starving ache that has begun to rock through him, which wants only to find a way beyond the already tattered confines of his self-restraint and to her. His heart is absolutely racing, leaping, throbbing — painful and exultant and bruising and so, so alive — and from where Lily's fringe is kissing him, teasing him, he can tell that she's around the area that would make it possible for her to hear it.

And just as he wonders if she actually can, her murky voice flutters up to him.

"Does this bother you?" she asks and for a moment the entire world seems to stoop into a great tilt. "Me, here like this," she clarifies, in a manner that he can only describe as wondrous and questioning and aware, and this forces him to swallow, slow and hard.

What little sanity he has left directs his attention to the fact that this is his opportunity to remove himself from this mess of a situation, knowing that regardless of whether she wanted him there or not, Lily still wouldn't bother to try and hinder his leave if he were to pull himself from her and walk away.

And yet, thick and husky, he says, "No," and means it.

She stiffens before him as all of her muscles abruptly pull taut, an odd strain gripping at her. "It should," she argues and Teddy's eyes fall open.

Uncomprehending and aimless, the blurry state of his unfocused vision eventually adjusts and he finds himself staring at the silvery, glowing foliage above him, which further spans into dusky almost-purples and greens and blues, and as he half-follows the rough, wooden veins of the tree at his back he can't help wondering about Lily's words; about whether or not she was right and it really should. ...

"Maybe," he finally concedes, despite his suspicions that this time she may be wrong, but he thinks that Lily catches this, hears what (logically) shouldn't be there in such a situation, because she pulls back, her arm straightening out as her wrist brushes against him, and then she scrutinizes him, making him wonder what he must look like to her, wincing and flushed as he is, his chest shallowly fluctuating.

Her prolonged stare makes him feel intimidated and overwhelmed and self-conscious.

She frowns but there's something delicate behind it.

Then, beyond any of his expectations: "I'm in love with you, Teddy," Lily tells him again, pressing it into him as if telling him once hadn't been enough, and she somehow manages to sound more substantial and naked with her face upturned to him the way it is now.

Teddy's throat locks. He no longer has the strength needed to distinguish what he feels or identify each little thing she is doing to his heart and his body and his mind and so doesn't pointlessly attempt to. He doesn't work to give himself even the barest semblance of being unaffected, doesn't lie himself into believing that he can resist, but half closes his eyes and allows his tone to be just as plain as hers.

"What am I supposed to say to that?" he asks because he doesn't know, can't figure anything out, doesn't have a clue, and to his surprise (although he should have expected it, should have expected anything) she actually laughs; that same silent, nebulous exhale from her lips, which scatters and trails but this time sounds exceptionally humourless.

"I don't know," she responds as she further severs herself from him, her arm drifting from his side as she moves back, making his pulse take on an even more erratic pace (though for entirely different reasons than from those of before) and he finally looks back down. "You could say I'm stupid," she suggests, and she's about to fold her arms when he mindlessly advances on her, capturing her closest wrist in his hand and engulfing it within his grasp, breaching the space between them until it's again as small as it had been.

Lily's shocked and more than that, he can just see in the dim light that her blood has gathered faintly beneath her cheeks: a reaction she hadn't had when she'd confessed to him but which was appearing at this simple (yet not so simple) gesture of his.

And the sight cements his resolve, which he hadn't initially even realized was forming, to continue. He intently takes her in, from her head to her toes — her small, rounded ankle bones to the scar bolted across her right kneecap; the vague way he can see of how her hips and torso connect beneath the loose fabric of her jumper and shorts to the peeking curve of her collarbones; the blurry ovals of her ears (shrouded by her hair) to her mouth, which is forming his name, in warning, in amazement, in an attempt to either draw him closer or back — and he was leaning forward, bending down, pulling her wrist closer to him before he could even catch the beginnings of any of these actions but making no effort to stop them once he does, and while Lily isn't moving, she isn't stopping him either.

He's close enough to feel her warmth and then closer still for the taste of her skin to tease his mouth and then Lily's hand's coming up to embrace his cheek, her curled fingertips grazing his jaw and then unfolding to hold him, guide him, and all he can hear is her breath and his breath and his heartbeat almost exploding in his ears. ...

And Lily kisses him: She presses her lips into that soft crease between his mouth and his chin, her upper lip coming very close to meeting his bottom, and it's not at all what he'd anticipated and perhaps a little awkward but he hardly acknowledges this because it mostly just makes his chest ache in what is both a good and a bad way.

When Lily's lips leave his slightly rough skin, which he'd neglected to shave that morning, he can feel his blush coming even before it does and his breath catches in an audible, peculiar way as her own mixes with his for a few feverish moments, hers haphazardly breaking before it continues after a beat.

She watches him with large eyes and says with that odd, breathless femininity from earlier back in her voice, "You know better than to do something like that."

The tone makes his abdomen twist and he opens his mouth to tell her no, he clearly doesn't, but all that comes out is weighted air.

She blinks and he absently pulls his bottom lip in between his teeth, wetting it before letting go.

"Why would you even do that?" Lily finally asks, and her hand has frozen against him.

But he doesn't know how to answer this beyond that it had purely been instinct and everything inside of him, all that he had kept so firmly pent up, which had automatically guided his actions when she'd pulled away. He doesn't even know if she would accept such an answer. Besides, being so close to her, so far away from everyone and everything else, it was addicting, it kind of _hurt_, because all it made him think about was of how much he cared, how much he wanted to wrap her in his arms without there being any controversy or ache or wrongness surrounding it, and even more than all of that, how much he just wanted to kiss her, not only for the experience itself but so he could just _feel_for a single moment what it would be like to be with her.

Eventually, his moral sense in the back seat, he says her name and his voice is a nearly indecipherable rumble. "Don't move your hand," he instructs her.

A pause and then, "Why?" she cautiously asks, and her eyes — already caught with his own — alive with scalding, calming browns and attention; rivaling emotion and thought — flicker.

And because he knows that she doesn't want it under these circumstances, because what she wants in that moment is more significant to him than his own desires, he tells her, "Because I'll kiss you if you do."

The colour in Lily's face deepens, her chin tilts just a little bit down and she presses her lips together as she pushes him back, unwinding her hand from his own with a temperance that he hadn't seen much from her until now, and the manner's slightly unnatural to witness when he compares it to the aloof, provoking girl he's come to know but at the same time, unarguably natural in the moment; fitting for who he had touched and glimpsed.

She seems to be divided as she stands uncertainly before him, as he remorsefully straightens himself up (regretful for reasons he maybe shouldn't be) and he is able to track every change in her obscure hesitation as it plays through each of her cloudy features — and then, without warning, he suddenly wishes that he'd prepared himself for this, regardless of how impossible such a thing would have logically been; wishes that he would have once done something other than obstinately push everything about her away, behaving as a coward through and through.

Perhaps if he had, he would know what it is he should be doing next: how he could conclude this chaotic situation in the best way possible — exactly what the "best way" would essentially entail — and whether it would end in anyone's favour. But as it is, he hadn't, which meant that he was left utterly confused, and not only at the situation's general disarray or even at the frost that was gradually assembling itself in Lily's eyes, but as to how he could have salvaged the moment before it came to its unyielding close; ended as Lily looked from him, walked past him (collecting the book he hadn't noticed she'd possessed or dropped) and only half-turned back to him, partially acknowledging him with her drifting voice and remote air.

"Go back, Teddy," she says and again, he wishes that he would've done something.

"Lily ..."

"Go back," she repeats, pointedly but effortlessly speaking over him, and his misery momentarily transforms into frustration as he wonders if this is worth it — all of this or part of this or even the shyest shadow of what he's doing and has done and still wants to do.

Can the love he feels for one person justify breaking another person's heart? Make it acceptable, or at least understandable, when that heart he'd unavoidably hurt would be that of the person he'd already promised himself to? But yet, with that said, would it make him any better of a man if he were to continue lying to Victoire as he had been, simply to save their falsehood of a marriage and her from crying? And wouldn't she only cry more if the truth were to come out through some means other than his own mouth, such as by her own personal realization (if she were to correctly, accidentally read some starving, lovelorn look that he would inevitably send Lily) or by someone else — someone who, while entirely unrelated to the matter, had disillusioned it all anyway? And on the other hand, was it fair to Lily? To allow her to lay her heart out bare and receive nothing in return? Because while it was true that she had made the decision on all her own, while it was obvious that she'd have to deal with the consequences of her actions accordingly, if he ... if he felt the _same_, if the feelings she had described were furiously, hungrily burning inside of his own heart too, then was it right of him to keep them to himself? Right, when the absolute only thing he wanted more than no one being left hurt was for his feelings to simply embrace her?

But ... still, was it right to tell Lily when he himself didn't know whether he'd be able to ever give her anything greater than that? Anything more than his words?

Teddy looks back at Lily, at how she is studiously not looking at him, at how detached her expression is, and he wonders (were the opportunity to arise) if she would even allow him to make them into anything. If she'd let him in at all. But the thought that she wouldn't — that he would continue on, always lying, always hurting Lily, always hurting Victoire — makes him feel physically ill.

"Forget it."

His gaze darts from her back, where he had absently been watching, and to her own, which is steady and gleaming and slightly creased, and he wants to ask her '_What?'_ but is unable to make any sound.

"What I admitted to you," she answers with her secretive smile, hearing him as she normally does, and her confession — the feeling of her head whispering against his chest — awakens inside of him; resounds. "Forget it. I meant it, but it's irrelevant."

And nauseous, Teddy's stomach churns. Plummets.

How, he wonders, could she possibly think that such a thing didn't matter?

"Go," Lily persists but he can't move his feet and he can't move his eyes and again, the only reason why he even knows that his heart is still going is because of the fact that he is too: standing there and wretchedly breathing and able to feel the hunger that hurts and hurts and hurts.

Teddy watches her dimly shimmering hair and her stony expression and waits to hear even the slightest doubt, anticipates the faintest crack, and he doesn't know why he is or what he'll do if he hears or sees anything but he needs it all the same, he needs her to let him in, her needs it the way he needs blood and oxygen and her, always her —

"I'd imagine Victoire's looking for you."

And everything around him crumbles because Lily says it so easily, breaks because he knows that it's true. She wouldn't be actively searching of course, because Victoire refuses to acknowledge when he's in a mood or to be the first to fold, but he knows that by this time she would be glancing about the rooms as she progressively makes her way through, self-consciously and abstractedly whispering about the situation into Dominique's ear, fiddling with her ring, and for a moment, the stress and the guilt and the rippling pain that he'd already known was beginning its widespread affect but still seems to bulldoze into him as if he'd been unaware makes him almost want to throw up.

"Go."

He shifts where he stands before stilling, unable to move any further, his back to her, and he can feel from the stroking on his spine that she's watching and then by its gentle, kindling absence that she has finally, completely turned away and it _hurts _— it bites into him like nothing else, nothing ever — and he doesn't know what to do, he doesn't. He _doesn't_.

He wonders if she's given up and then he remembers, recalls from each way she had looked at him, that she had never expected anything and this is painful too. Then he asks himself if he's given up and he acknowledges that he hasn't: somehow, even with everything, he's still holding onto something that he can't even see or understand but which some (large, dominating) part of himself refuses to stop clinging to, and he wonders (suddenly feeling wildly and frantically and amazingly honest) if he even has a choice (if he even wants a choice) because if it aches like this, if she leaves him so impossibly sore (so much more than anything he's felt in result of Victoire) and if something inside of him so earnestly presses that it needs — _wants__ — _her, is there really even a purpose to this fight? Does he, at this point, even want there to be one?

And if he's genuine, sincere for one of the few times he has been since this whole ordeal began, he knows that he doesn't.

He wants it to be over.

(He wants Lily.)

But ... but he's married to Victoire. _He is the husband of Victoir_e. He had finally — after putting it off for so long — after not understanding why he'd wanted to put it off for so long — asked her to marry him, two years ago now, and she had been so excited — so profoundly _happy_ that she had pushed for their wedding to happen as soon as it possibly could and within mere months it had, but while he had been happy too, he certainly hadn't felt as over-joyed as Victoire, which was only emphasized by the fact that it was impossible for him to remember the way he actually _had_ felt that day, even as it comes back to him in the same moment how he'd briefly glanced at Lily — dawns that he's remembered that quiet smile of hers (the one he only now understands) all the way till now — despite how he hadn't looked at her again that day.

But still, he's happy, isn't he? Happy with Victoire? Happy married to Victoire? At least happy to an extent? And he loves her, doesn't he? Loves her, even if it isn't as much as he once did? Even if it isn't in the same way that he had?

Yet, his attempts to reassure himself fall onto deaf ears because that evasive, flighty honesty of his is back, rearing its head in again, telling him with its fleeting but blunt sincerity that happiness simply shouldn't feel so sad and that there's a difference between loving someone and being in love, and he can't deny it, even if some tiny, honourable part of him wants to. Furthermore, he can't ignore the fact that he's here: _Here_ with Lily, apart from Victoire, or that this has been consciously done, purposefully chosen and — and — and Teddy's breathing stops.

There is some lingering warmth in the air that trails around him, nipping at his skin as it goes, and some internal stretch that is happening beneath his bones, undeniably trying to direct him to the woman behind him, and Teddy realizes — _for the first time comprehends_ — that the reason he's still here is because while Victoire's pain makes him sick, Lily's makes him want to die, and his heart stutters. He breathes and the feeling is substantial, unimpeded, clear for what is probably the first time that night (the first time in many, many nights) and Teddy grasps in that moment — that moment which should seem much scarier than it actually does — accepts with abrupt and stark clarity — that he just can't do this, leave her.

Everything aside, everything included, he just can't leave Lily, the person who is purely everything, the woman he had chosen before it had dawned that he'd even have to choose.

Teddy thinks of Victoire again, about the girl he's loved from his childhood and even until now, but it's as he'd already worked out, as he had all of this time suspected, and that's that it's simply, irrevocably changed. She's stayed the same but he hasn't and the way he cares for her has shifted too, albeit not in the way he intended, but it's suddenly and bitterly obvious that the absolute worst, most cruel thing he could ever possibly do is pretend that the vow he'd taken, the one giving her his heart, was still true when it wasn't — because he's in love with Lily, it's as plain and as complicated as that, and the bottom line is that there's nothing more worth it for him than her.

And there's no way around that — he wouldn't want it even if there was — and it's at this that Teddy turns (faster than what should be possible) and presses Lily's back tightly into his chest, buries his face into the disheveled spiral of her hair and crushes her in his arms.

Before she can speak, before she can do anything, he sharply inhales and (just as she had earlier proposed for him to) exclaims, "_You're so _stupid."

And she is bewildered — for a moment, her chest doesn't even move — but then she shudders and asks, in a tone more astonished than any he'd ever heard from her, "_What?"_

The arch of his shoulders becoming a bit rounder, the curve of spine becoming a bit steeper, he tightens his grasp on her just that bit more and tells her, "I love you," and Lily, who had been struggling in his arms, trying to see his face, trying to understand, stops, comes to an utter and wholly standstill.

His heart is vibrating and her fragrance has completely enveloped him and nothing else exists; nothing but Lily and the way she feels and the way she fits and how much he cares.

"What ... What are you even talking about, Teddy? How can you say — Are you even _listening_ to yourself?" she demands, her voice changing from hushed to vicious in a span so short that he can't even blink, and then she's furiously trying to break out of his embrace again. "Is this supposed to be _funny_?"

And Teddy evens out his spine, grips her shoulders when she whirls around and glares into her face as his own flushes deeply with the force of his intensity.

"_Nothing_ about this is funny," he tells her, promises her, boring down into her pale and confounded and brimming expression, and her body relaxes but only minutely and only for a moment before it turns rigid as she shrugs him off, her gestures sure and cutting.

Glowering, staring up at him with hard and flat eyes, she hisses, "You _can't_ —" but he refuses to let her finish.

"I'm in love with you."

And again, she is so thoroughly surprised that she actually flinches back.

"_What?_" she repeats and Teddy almost wants to smile — laugh at how strange it is that for once it's he with the answers and she with the questions, even while some distant part of him recognizes that the change is kind of nice — but he doesn't. Instead, he squashes the ridiculous and blushing embarrassment that always seems to paralyse him of coherent thought and speech when he finds himself in a situation of the vaguest intimacy with Lily and tries to stabilize himself.

Steadfast, he watches her. "I keep coming back to you," he nervously, sincerely says, "No matter what I do. And you've noticed it yourself, haven't you? In this past year, I haven't been able to stay away from you. Haven't been able to get you off of my mind. And all of this time, I —" but he breaks off, swallows, tries to figure out how he's supposed to continue looking at her when her gaze is so wide and consuming and he feels so very, very raw. "I've s**–**struggled with it b**–**because —" but he trails again, his throat dry as he resigns himself to not being able to clearly tell her all of the things that have for months upon months existed inside of his head, tormenting him and keeping him up. "Well, you know. You know why. But things are just ... they're just ... they're different, Lily," he finishes, because it's the only way he knows how. "Things've changed."

And Lily just looks at him — she looks at him with her mouth open and her eyebrows high; she looks at him as if there is no other material thing around but him; she looks at him as if she's never seen him before — and then her stupefaction breaks, her hands move to her hips and she laughs: not in the soft, breathless way that she normally does, but harshly, much more tangibly, not the least bit of humour in it to be heard, and he notices with a sickening, resounding, terrible jolt that her eyes are full.

"You say that as if it's supposed to mean something," she spits, condescending, trembling, the shady cast-offs from the moonlight on her eyelashes severe as they sweep down her cheeks, and he feels his eyebrows pull.

"You act as if it isn't," he hoarsely, evenly replies. A swallow. "I love you."

And her brittle countenance shatters. There is something in his words or in his eyes that bridges the gap between them and Lily's arms listlessly fall to her sides, the straight line of her back slants, and she sucks her bottom lip into her mouth, bites down hard, as her face blossoms with a desperate sort of red that he doesn't believe will ever remove itself from his memory.

She spins around, a tell-tale hiccup leaving her mouth as one of her hands dart up, and Teddy wants to die.

"How?" she finally moans and he moves closer — wanting to pull her away from the steady, ethereal shadows that are again dancing across her body, similar to how they had been when he'd first seen her, but somehow managing to hold back — and he speaks before he can consciously understand what she's even asked.

"Because you're Lily," he responds, thick. "And because it's not really supposed to make any sense."

Lily's ribs jerkily retract and expand, and her other hand moves up to muffle the low noises escaping from between her fingers. "It's _wrong_," she insists. "You _c**–**can't_ —"

But this strikes him mercilessly in his already excruciatingly twisting heart and his words comes much louder, quicker and harsher than he intends: "Don't say that!" he commands, shivers creeping across his skin, raising the hair on his arms and the back of his neck. "The only thing wrong about this, about _any_ of this, is the circumstances!"

And her chest visibly lurches again, her head tilts downward, and he leans even closer, able to tell that she's working up to something, wanting to hear some direct response, just wanting to _know _—

And Lily abruptly, wetly cries, "You're an _idiot_,__" and he reels back before it registers into him what she's saying, _why_ she's saying what she is, and it dawns that she's simply replying to him in the same that he had to her, when he'd turned around, when he'd found her again, when he hadn't known how else to say what he wanted to much to say, and this take away all of the energy remaining in his body.

He caves: knees bent and arms taking in as much of her as he can, his face sinking into the place that her shoulder and neck meet, he wraps himself around her as deeply as he can, clenching his jaw and attempting to ignore the almost foreign prickling behind his nose.

"I love you," he mumbles into the shell of her ear and another quake travels through her body.

"You're stupid," she says but he knows, he knows what she's saying to him and he wants to tell her in turn that hunger doesn't have to hurt, wants to let her know that it can be sated, remedied the way it has been now, but he can feel — feel as Lily reaches up to tangle her fingers with his own, which are on her shoulder; as his knuckles mold themselves into her palm — as her tears transfer from her skin to his skin and bind; as he attempts to distinguish between the meshed beating of her heart and his own — that she's already aware; Teddy can feel that she knows.

And Lily holds on.

:+:

A/N: Please don't favourite this without leaving a review. Thank you! x


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